NOTED JESUIT SOCIAL SCIENTIST AND POLITICAL ACTIVIST FR. JOHN CARROLL PASSES AWAY Eleanor R. Dionisio 21July 2014 In 1943, a slightly built nineteen-year-old from Orange, New Jersey named Jack Carroll entered the New York Province of the Society of Jesus. In 1946, that choice took Jack Carroll to the other side of the world, where he and several other young Jesuits made their home in an unfamiliar country. After his ordination in 1955, he would leave that country several times to serve where the Society of Jesus thought he was needed more. But the Philippines—and his conviction in God’s compassionate grace for Filipinos, especially for the poor—formed the smoldering core of his concern as a social scientist, a political activist, and a Jesuit. In the 1950s, Fr. Jack went back to the United States for a masters in sociology at Fordham University and a doctorate in sociology at Cornell University. After his return to the Philippines in the 1960s, Fr. Jack joined the Institute of Social Order (ISO), a Jesuit apostolate dedicated to the application of Catholic social teaching to the persistent problems of poverty, inequity, and injustice in Philippine society. The search for solutions to those problems fuelled his career as a social scientist. In the 1960s he was among the earliest faculty members of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the Ateneo de Manila University. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he served as a member of the board of that university and of the Philippine Social Science Council (PSSC). But he continued to work directly with and for the poor into the 1970s in the National Secretariat for Social Action (NASSA), the fledgling executive arm of the Episcopal Commission on Social Action of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP). After President Ferdinand E. Marcos declared martial law in 1972, Fr. Jack went full-time into an academic career. In 1973 he left the Philippines to teach at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, serving as dean of its Faculty of Social Sciences from 1975 to 1981. In 1981 and 1982 he was a Visiting Professor at Cornell University. All those years he was also monitoring events under the Marcos dictatorship. In the mid-1970s he started writing articles against the dictatorship under a pseudonym, Benjamin A. McCloskey. The articles were published in a Catholic publication in the Philippines, The Communicator, soon closed by the military, and in the Jesuit publications Études in France and America in the United States. In 1984, Fr. Bienvenido Nebres, SJ, then superior of the Philippine Province of the Society of Jesus, asked Fr. Jack to establish a think tank that would articulate an analysis and vision of Philippine society founded on Catholic social teaching. It was hoped that this analysis and vision could become a foundation upon which the nonviolent forces of the opposition could build a democratic program of government as an alternative to the Extreme Left and the Marcos dictatorship. With Fr. Nebres and Bishop Francisco F. Claver, SJ, Fr. Jack founded the Institute on Church and Social Issues (ICSI), of which he became the first Executive Director in 1984. ICSI’s early activities included writing papers that formulated strategies and scenarios for the anti-dictatorship opposition. One such paper is said to have been found in the bedroom of the First Lady, Imelda R. Marcos, after the Marcoses fled the presidential palace in February 1986, although this rumor has never been confirmed. In the post-authoritarian era, Fr. Jack wrote and published—this time under his own name—numerous articles and books on Philippine issues. He was a consultant for the Commission on Social Concerns of the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines (PCP-II), the 1991 gathering of bishops, clergy, religious, and laity which determined the directions of the Catholic Church in the Philippines for the third millennium. He also helped to craft a number of pastoral documents of the CBCP. Fr. Jack was himself a pastor to the poor. His close engagement with the people of Payatas caused him to reflect that while long-term structural change is the answer to poverty and injustice, the poor cannot wait for long-term change. This moved him to establish a college scholarship program for the youth, a feeding program for children, and Natural Family Planning (NFP) training for couples in Payatas. Even at 90, Fr. Jack continued to be a keen and often witty observer of Philippine society and the Catholic Church, a trusted mentor and adviser for the staff members of ICSI—now renamed the John J. Carroll Institute on Church and Social Issues (JJCICSI)—and its most prolific and published research associate. On 14 July 2014, JJCICSI launched his last book, Engaging Society II: Musings of an Oxymoron. That same day he was brought home from the hospital to Loyola House of Studies, following his wish to spend his last days in community with his brother Jesuits. On 17 July 2014, God embraced him into the community of saints.
Posted on: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 06:41:02 +0000